Editorial: Parents should ensure kids' school attendance

How much effort should our schools put into boosting daily attendance, making sure that the kids show up for school every day?

Not as much as the parents.But the schools have two reasons to make a strong effort: educating the children and receiving the funds to do so.

Funding for Michigan school districts depends on student counts conducted twice a year. Since each child represents several thousand dollars a year, savvy school districts take pains to ensure that kids come to school on those count days using extra activities as well as ongoing attendance initiatives.

In some states, California included, school support depends on daily attendance. One child absent for one day may cost the district as much as $50. Some school districts in those states are asking parents for reimbursements, according to an Associated Press article.

There’s little doubt that absence from class is costly where it counts: learning.

The article cites recent research that missing a couple of weeks of school, besides reducing state aid, puts kids behind the rest of their class, burdens their teachers and undermines drives to improve scores on standardized tests.

In Berkeley, Calif., a high school official stages a movie night for the grade with the best attendance.

Other schools hold raffles for laptops or bicycles. In a Sacramento-area district, the grand prize, a $20,000 voucher for a new car, was so attractive the rules for entry had to be changed from a month’s perfect attendance to five months.

Districts use sticks as well as carrots, sweeping favorite hangouts during school hours, calling in parents to discuss unexcused absences.

Another California district has started alternate-Saturday morning makeup classes.

Districts are taking closer looks at what leads children to stay home: illness, sure; transportation, maybe; bullying, a possibility we’re increasingly sensitized to. There could be even separation anxiety for a young child.

It can go too far. One school district urges parents of children with sniffles or a stomach ache to let them start school, even if they eventually go home early, in part so the district will receive its per-diem.

That’s iffy. The child, indeed, might decide school is better than staying home or going home. Whatever illness the child has may spread to others.

Ultimately, it’s the parents who have to answer for excessive absenteeism. They’re the ones who must show the kids that learning is a job. It doesn’t put food on the table immediately,but someday it will.